Gold recovery began early at SS Central America wreck

Kathy Lynn Gray, The Columbus Dispatch

Monday

May 5, 2014 at 12:01 AMMay 6, 2014 at 9:52 AM

Gold has once again been recovered from Columbus' favorite shipwreck, the SS Central America. The company hired to bring up the wreck's remaining treasure has announced that it retrieved five gold bars and two $20 coins during a two-hour reconnaissance dive on April 15.

Gold has once again been recovered from Columbus’ favorite shipwreck, the SS Central America.

The company hired to bring up the wreck’s remaining treasure has announced that it retrieved five gold bars and two $20 coins during a two-hour reconnaissance dive on April 15. The company’s ship, the Odyssey Explorer, was on its way to Charleston, S.C., to prepare for recovery of the shipwreck gold when it stopped for the dive.

The recovery was not revealed until late Sunday.

Crews go back to recover gold

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The pieces are from the Central America, a gold-laden ship that sank in 1857 off the coast of South Carolina during a hurricane. The shipwreck was found in 1988 by a group of scientists based in Columbus who, during the next four years, brought up gold bars and coins worth more than $40?m illion.

But the recovery was halted in 1991 as a result of legal issues and did not resume until April 23.

Investors, including The Dispatch Printing Company, had poured money into the original endeavor after its leader, Tommy Thompson, convinced them he could find the shipwreck and recover its gold. More than 100 people and companies invested, most of them from central Ohio, but none received any returns from what was originally found.

The aim of the current effort, led by a court-appointed receiver put into place last year, was the result of lawsuits filed by The Dispatch Printing Company, which publishes The Dispatch and Dispatch.com.

“I think this can still have a happy ending, and I’m hoping it does,” said Brad Kastan, 55, a Columbus money manager who was one of the youngest original investors. “For Columbus, it’s such a wonderful success story and a real tribute to a lot of people.”

But yesterday, when he learned about the new gold, Kastan said he also thought about how many investors have died since the 1980s.

“About a third of them are no longer with us, and they were some of the smartest and wisest people in the community,” he said.

Odyssey Marine Exploration, which the receiver hired for the expedition, said the recovered gold bars weigh from 96.5 to 313 troy ounces. At the current spot-gold price of $1,298 a troy ounce, that would make them worth just shy of $1.3 million.

Millions of dollars worth of gold is expected to be recovered from the wreck.

“We’re pleased that the receivership is succeeding — it’s what the investors deserve,” said Steven W. Tigges, an attorney for Dispatch Printing. “But there’s much more work to be done.”

He said the newly recovered gold is in a safe place.

During the April 15 dive, the Odyssey’s remotely run robot, Zeus, looked over the site, and its cameras showed gold bars and other artifacts “clearly visible” on the site’s surface. The robot brought up only those few items and a few artifacts at that time.

The find was not immediately announced for legal and security reasons, an Odyssey spokesman said. Reporters who visited the ship while it was in port on April 22 were not told of the find as they toured the ship and interviewed its crew.

“The dive confirms for me that the site has not been disturbed since 1991, when I was last there,” said Bob Evans, the chief scientist for the first trips to the shipwreck. Evans is the only one sailing on the Odyssey from the original trips.

The ship is again at the site. It left on April 23, returned to port in Charleston for several days last week, then went back to the site.

Work at the site runs 24 hours a day. Odyssey hopes to complete the recovery by September.

Under its contract, Odyssey Marine is paying for the operation and will receive 80 percent of the recovery proceeds until a fixed mobilization fee and a negotiated day rate are paid. After that, the company will receive 45 percent of the recovery proceeds.

Thompson remains a federal fugitive. U.S. marshals have been searching for him since the fall of 2012, when he didn’t show up for a contempt-of-court hearing in federal court related to lawsuits against his recovery company.

kgray@dispatch.com

@reporterkathy

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